Square pegs, round holes

THE phone rings in the Cabinet Division and a young officer answers
to hear the deputy secretary saying “the honourable prime minister wants to
announce relief for the people struck by a recent natural calamity; prepare a
proposal”.

The officer prepares a very comprehensive proposal taking into account the
economic state of the poor victims and inflation, as well as other factors. The
proposal is submitted for approval. The phone rings again and the boss says,
“Just copy-paste the amount from the proposal for the 2005 earthquake, replace
the word ‘earthquake’ with ‘flood’ and submit it again. There is no need to
revise the amount to be given away. Don’t try to be over-smart.” I am sure the
2005 proposal would have been created on the basis of that of the 1993 floods,
and so on. We’re stuck in the last century. This is how the typical government
office in Pakistan works.

Bureaucracy is the key to good governance, for civil servants take important
decisions that guide the destiny of the country. They are recruited mainly
through the CSS exam. There are 12 occupational groups in the civil service,
yet the exam hardly takes into consideration the educational background, the
aptitude and suitability of an individual for a particular service group.

As a result, we have cases where someone who holds a Master’s degree in
English literature ends up doing debiting and crediting work in the audits and
accounts service; someone who topped his university in journalism ends up in
the Pakistan Railways; while an engineer is stuck in the information service.
An expert in international relations may be calling the shots in the postal
group and a camera-shy, introverted woman might end up in the foreign service,
with the responsibility of projecting Pakistan’s image. A romantic poet might
end up in the police service, which is a mismatch unless he plans to read his
poetry to criminals.

The world is moving towards specialisation, with people knowing more and
more about less and less. We in Pakistan have people who know less and less
about more and more. The civil service needs reform, and the reform needs to start
from the basic recruitment phase.

There has been a mushroom growth of ‘CSS academies’ around the country,
which promise to prepare candidates for the exam. They specialise in helping
candidates take notes, answer objective-type questions and they predict a set
of 10 or 20 questions for each optional subject. The exam format has been
deciphered and they manage a reasonable rate of success for their clients in
the written exams. This has brought an end to the era of bureaucrats such as
Mukhtar Masood, Qudrat Ullah Shahab, and Agha Shahi who preferred creating to
cramming. The cramming approach is reflected in the decisions made by
bureaucrats later on during their careers.

The exam has faults of its own, such as the fact that marking is
inconsistent. One year, a subject — say, history — would net a candidate 193
marks out of 200; next year the highest score in the same subject would be just
93. (A person really did get 193 marks in history in recent years.) The
discrepancy can only have two explanations: either Toynbee appeared in the exam
and there was no K.K. Aziz the next year, or the system is inconsistent.

The exam currently comprises 1,500 marks divided up as 600 marks for
optional subjects, 600 for compulsory subjects and 300 for the interview. Optional
subjects should be done away with because they do not increase the candidate’s
knowledge and are used only to accrue marks. Once the exam has been taken,
these subjects are out of sight and later out of mind as well. Similarly,
candidates that opt for a regional language as an optional subject gain
unreasonably greater marks due to prevalent biases in the people who do the
marking. This advantage is nothing but an impingement on merit and undermines
the principle of a fair-playing ground.

Along with compulsory subjects there should be one additional paper
depending on the choice a candidate makes on the basis of his education,
aptitude and interest. The service groups should be divided into four
categories. Candidates that want to join the police service, the district
management group or the military lands and cantonment group should take the
additional paper of law. The curriculum for this should not only be
comprehensive but modern as well. Meanwhile, candidates interested in the
information service, Pakistan Post, Pakistan Railways and the office management
group should take an additional paper on marketing, media and management.

Individuals who are interested in serving in the foreign service or the
commerce and trade group should take international relations as an additional
paper. Financial administration should be the additional exam for candidates
interested in accounts, customs and income tax.

Candidates should not be allowed to opt for more than one set of service
groups in a given year. In this way, we will automatically get the right people
— better motivated and better trained through the relevant education — for the
right job. A bit of training at the Civil Services Academy focusing mainly on
work ethics and grooming would set them and the country in the right direction.
Lastly, I would like to answer a reader who asked me: “Do you really believe
anybody is listening to you?” My answer is, “no, but that won’t stop me from
saying it”.